Health Cost increases are slowing. 2008 was the slowest year of growth. But we will soon overtake Germany as the country with the largest healthcare spend.

There are 1M less hospital admissions than in 1980. Fewer people are visiting Physician’s offices. Driven by the recession. Prescription drug spend is recovering thanks to generics. Pharma R&D is on the rise but Pharma Market Cap has declined. Other Health IT companies are struggling. Are they risk averse? Do they have the wrong business model. “Gen Y creatives don’t want to join the faceless ranks of scientists in the industrial wastelands of New Jersey”

1982 – 2004 Over 85s were becoming healthier with fewer institutionalized. But we are reversing the trend…

USA v UK. 5x the level of diabetes (22.5%) And it is on the rise. Projected to grow 6x in next 40 years.

We are facing an exodus of 80 hour/week MDs to be replaced with 30 hour/week MDs.

Things To Do: 1. Tame the documentation monster 2. Help people find the information they need effortlessly 3. Acommodate the diversity of People’s Needs and Styles 4. Equip familities with tools and information 5. Entertain and have fun

Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media

Where is the Health World going?

Tim is the father of Web 2.0. After the dot com bust it was a way to distinguish the companies that survived. All the survivors found a way to capture the intelligence of the crowd. Google harness the information from every click.

O’Reilly watches what alpha geeks are doing….

Where the technology is going:

Data is the “Intel Inside” in the next generation of applications. Applications DEPEND on cooperating data services. Think of Google Maps delivered on your phone. We are building a data driven operating system for the Internet.

Health 2.0 – we are building a single computer in which everything is connected. Devices are just a part of the system. Health CAre is still an island. How do we want it to be transformed and connected?

The Internet Operating System is a real-time system.

“Would you like to cross a busy street based upon information from 5 minutes ago?”

Google is significant because they teach us the most about the Internet. e.g. Adwords

“We need to turn Health in to a science and not an art.”

It will be hard. It will break many existing systems. Look at the pain we have seen in media. Disruption is called disruption for a reason.

“Healthcare needs an information nervous system. It needs to react in real time.”

Web 2.0 is not about hip Web 2.0 companies. Walmart is as much web 2.0. Their enterprise is infused with technology. products re-ordered within 20 seconds of a purchase being made at a checkout.

The iPad will be a game changer. e.g. Interactive EMR on a tablet.

“The Phone is a sensor platform”

Every device generates data and every action creates an information shadow on the internet.

There is a lot of innovation coming from sources outside healthcare. eg. Quantified self movement.

There will be sensors everywhere There will be collective intelligence

JG: “Many healthcare institutions need to be shaken to their foundations”

The hospital was a place people were supposed to come to in order to meet and receive service. The Internet changes that fundamentally. TO: “Whenever I talk to Todd Park I become hopeful”

Are we focusing on the right things. There is a lot of trivia that passes for innovation today. We need to work on hard problems.

TO: Hard Problem: can we harness all the health data to do predictive analytics on what works and what doesn’t.

JG: Hard Problem: The transactional complexity of the system – billions of transactions that we need to make simpler. We need to be able to exercise human judgement but we currently swamp that with administrivia and data that adds no value.